Reply to IB English Curriculum vs “Honors English”

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m an IB English teacher. I love the program and placed my own children in it.

IB English is rigorous and extremely writing focused. There’s a curriculum change on the horizon, but currently students: 
- read 13 texts over 2 years (Many units end with essays to prep for the course-end assessments)
- complete the Higher Level essay, which is literary analysis assessed by IB 
- complete the Individual Oral, which is a 15 minute oral assessment. (This is a tricky task. Students are only allowed ten bullet points and they must speak for a sustained ten minutes.) 
- sit for the Paper 1 and Paper 2 exams at the end of senior year

The course develops strong writers and critical thinkers. I highly recommend it. [/quote]

I'm also an IB English teacher, and must note that you are describing English A: Literature.  English A: Lang & Lit is the other (and more common) option, with fewer literary texts, but "non-literary" works included.  OP needs to establish if her kid has the option of DP Lit or DP Lang & Lit, and make a decision according to her child's interests and abilities.

(There's also MYP Lang & Lit for middle school, which I hate but don't think is an option at most schools anyway).[/quote]

DP. How many books (fiction and nonfiction) do they read in language & lit? I think that is the one they offer at my school. TIA.[/quote]

In DP L&L, Standard Level kids read four literary works over two years, and Higher Level read six.  A literary work can be a novel, play, group of short stories by the same author, or poems by the same author.   In addition, they read multiple non-literary bodies of work; a non-literary body of work can be a group of speeches by the same person/organization, a group of ads by the same organization, a documentary, a group of articles by the same person/organization.  There is a balance of literary and non-literary study in Lang & Lit, but the assessments are the same as for Lit: higher level essay, individual oral, paper 1 & paper 2 exams.

I've taught both Lit and Lang & Lit for the past 10 years, and I enjoy them both.  However, in schools that offer both, kids who truly enjoy reading tend to gravitate (or are pushed by teachers) toward Lit.  At my current school, my DP Lit class is a group of 8 kids who are voracious readers and love discussing literature; my DP Lang & Lit class is larger, and contains a lot of kids who may be smart, but who do not enjoy reading and do not read for pleasure at all.  In the past, I've worked at a school where only Lang & Lit was offered, and there was a nice mix of readers and non-readers in the sections.

Like most experienced DP teachers, I despise the IB MYP (middle years program) course for middle schoolers, but that is another story. 
          [/quote]

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